I love Steffany Gretzinger’s music. It is soft and warm and deep as a soul.

I will be doing dishes or driving or standing in the middle of the carpet, curling my toes and wondering what to do next when her Morning Song comes on – and I cry.

Night turns to morning, You have been waiting

He has been waiting – always waiting, always awake. Porch light on, you might say, candle in the window, screen door propped open. Waiting. There is no timer, no stopping. No giving up and running into town for a movie, no locking of the door, no turning in for the night.

I am waited for? The lyrics swell and sway and pull me into weeping. I am waited for.

It all reminds me of a really long road trip to a really rainy place to visit my youngest sister, the one who looks like me and craves salted caramel frozen yogurt with me and gives me those hugs, you know. That sister. And we drove – drove and car-camped and drove again and fell into bed at some late-early hour.

Night turns to morning, You have been waiting

Waiting to just get there, waiting to sleep in a real bed, waiting to hug my sister again, waiting to smile and laugh together.

We sit on a couch and she looks at me, and it comes out – we paid to come. We paid in gas and time and in nights on a hard car bed and in kinky necks and eating out and lots of coffee. We paid in grit and tears and love, and we were waiting.

It’s the dawn of a new day You’ve painted for me

I watched lazily out the rear window while light drifted slowly into the sky. Haze – enough to illuminate only the horizon. Then dark lightened to gray dusk and invisible objects took shape, if not substance. Liquid – the light trickled slowly down the rocks and eastern edges of the hills until it pooled softly on the tops of the valleys and turned the world magic (again). I feel the light permeated with love. I catch my breath against it all and then the loveliness sweeps over and I am half drowned in it.

There it was, in the midst of a remembered road trip. God and Grant loving me, us loving her, so much passion flowing from one heart to the next. Waiting.

I squeeze my feet and knees together, still standing in the living room. A small part of me wants to go, turn off that song, not feel the deep hard hurty lovely feels. A bigger part of me stays, letting my heart unravel, letting me take the love for my sister and hold it up to God and realize he’s paid his love, he’s doing his waiting, he waits for me.

I’m waking up

[Song here]